Lou Pacheco Raynham Select Board Candidate 2026

(Episode Description is AI generated and may be errors in accuracy)

Local government sounds simple until you’re the one making the call with limited money, competing priorities, and neighbors who all need something different. We talk with Raynham Select Board candidate Lou Pacheco about what the job really looks like when you treat it as public service, not a slogan: get out in the field, learn the facts firsthand, bring them back to the board, and explain decisions clearly where everyone can hear them.

Lou connects his Raynham roots, Marine Corps service, decades in policing, and small business experience to a practical philosophy of town leadership. He argues that a select board works best as a unit, with members gathering input privately but deliberating together in public. We also dig into a big issue many towns face: as local journalism shrinks, how do residents stay informed and hold power accountable? Lou shares ideas for improving transparency through cable access and low-cost tools like AI-generated meeting transcripts and better distribution of minutes.

Budget pressure runs through everything. Rising costs, school funding needs, and aging infrastructure force tough tradeoffs, and Lou makes the case that “running the town like a business” misses the point of government services. We also cover priorities residents feel every day: project oversight for a public safety building, development that protects Raynham’s character, and traffic and speeding complaints that keep coming up at the doorsteps.

If you care about the Raynham town election, municipal budgeting, transparency in government, and what a select board can and cannot do, listen now and share this with a neighbor. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what issue you want town leaders to tackle first.

Transcript

Welcome And Candidate Introduction

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Inside Scoop. I'm Pat Riley, and we are here focusing on the annual town election coming up in the town of Rainham with our candidates. Right now we have candidate Lou Pachico, who is a candidate for the open seat on the Rainham Select Board. Welcome, Lou.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome. Nice seeing you again.

Roots In Rainham And Service

SPEAKER_03 0:19

Same here, thank you. And we're starting off by saying, in case there's anyone out there that doesn't know Lou Pachico, what would you like them to know about you? Give us a little background in first.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Well, I was uh born and raised here. My family's been here for six generations with my grandkids. And uh I raised my family here. I worked here for 38 years on the police department, and um we all and I have my own business. I have my own business here, Champion Pet Care. Uh that's a plug. Um on the corner of uh Hill Street and Judson Street. We've been there for 30 years, so my wife runs that mostly.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

So you went to the Rainham Schools?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Bridgewater Rainham?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Bridgewater Rainham. I was the uh second class in Bridgewater Rainham.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

So And it you went to the military after high school?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I joined a Marine Corps. Um I went to college, and then while I was in college, uh things heated up in Vietnam. So I volunteered for uh the Marines, and then once I get in, I volunteered for a special uh reconnaissance unit, sort of like the SEALs today. And um I uh I got tours in Westpac uh Asia and uh one tour in the Mediterranean.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

And you joined the Iranian police department starting as a dispatcher, was it?

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Yes, I did. That's um I started as a civilian dispatcher. My one little claim to fame that I like to tell people about is that um I've worked every position in a civil service police department, every rank in a civil service police department, from civilian dispatcher, patrol sergeant, uh lieutenant, captain, deputy chief, and chief. So a lot of people would go, you know, from patrol to chief, or many people have, but very few hit every rank.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

I would imagine both the town of Rainham and the police department changed considerably over that span.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yeah, when when I first came on, it was four, five, six guys, all had different uniforms, a couple were trained, most of them weren't. And myself and Peter King. Peter came in, Peter King came in a couple months before me, and he was a Marine too. And um he said when I came on, he said he was gonna change the police department, he was gonna make it professional, and he did. Uh we started with that, and by the time I left, we were teaching police stuff at the International Association of Chiefs of Police. So it was a uh Peter did a good job, brought the department up, and a lot of the guys that we brought on are here now. The lieutenants, the uh the chief, chief David Leplant, another local local man. And uh so it's a it's a good it's a good unit, it's a good police department, and uh it's good for the town.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

What do you see as the role of the member of the select board?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Well, that's a that's a great question, and I've thought about it a lot, and a lot of it came from uh talking with Mr. McKinnon for 30 years. Mr. McKinnon's actually appointed me.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

Really?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yes, he appointed me and in 1973. And um I've thought about it a lot, he taught me a lot about it, but I see the board as a unit, not as individuals. But I see the individuals as they should be talking to people privately, collect deliberating collectively between the three of them, and then uh making their decisions publicly. So the way I would like to look at it is I would like to be out in the field seeing what's going on and bringing that information back to the board and then deliberating with the board, with the board as a unit, and then making the decision publicly and explain to people why. We have to explain to them why we're doing things. Lots of times we know it, but it doesn't get fed down. A lot part of it is because of journalism. I mean, you know, not to date you, but you you used to write it uh weekly and and and semi-weekly.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

So all the meetings, they all got in the newspaper.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

And now it's difficult to get that word out.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yes, and let people know. And Mike Halen and I, through um Raycam, are doing that, and there's a couple of more steps that we can do so that we can get those meeting minutes with using AI, not costing us any more than what we're doing now, and give it to everybody so everybody knows, every hand knows what the other hand's doing. And I think that that would help. I mean, there's no magic formula. There's no, you know, the other night we were talking about chapter 70, and you're gonna do this and you're gonna do that. As a selectman, you don't have any any way. You want to do change chapter 70, then run as and and become a senator or a representative and and getting it funded and everything. It's a nice thing to say, and people that don't understand it think that, well, it's why don't they do that? Well, the reason is it's because we don't have any, we as a select person, if I was lucky enough to be, don't have any power over that. What we do have is we're boots on the ground. In other words, when we have an issue like the Pine Street issue that's going on now, I've been all through those woods, I've been through that brook, I've been through there. When I come back, and if you guys ask me if I win, you guys ask me what's going on in Pine Street, I'll know because I've been there. That that's what I think a selectman should be. Bringing that information back from the field and representing the people uh that way. And and of course you make mistakes, you can't represent everybody, you gotta make decisions that not everybody likes. But um that's the job as I see it.

SPEAKER_03 6:24

Yeah, it is making those tough decisions sometimes because you have limited funds, and uh, you know, it's great to get some from the state, and that would be wonderful, but you have what you have to work with.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Absolutely, and you know, I saw it so drastically when I was the chief of staff in Fall River. I mean, the easy things are already done. By the time it gets to the city council or the mayor of Fall River or the selectmen in the town, the easy stuff's been done because it would have been done already. You get the hard stuff that nobody else can handle. And that's what you sign on.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

So, how do you make those tough decisions? What's your strategy for decision making?

Why A Town Is Not A Business

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Well, you saw how I would attack the problem, and the decision I would make would be what I thought was best for the town. I don't have a cause, I don't have an agenda, I'm not building things, I'm not growing things, uh, I have no uh no no built-in agenda. My my the same way that I enforce the law, which is difficult too, but it's a different type of problem, is I try to do stay within the law, be respectful of everybody, and make the decision for the people that they would make if they were sitting in these three chairs. That that's the way I try to do it. So I don't make it for to help an individual or to to forward my cause or to forward my agenda. I would I make it the same as police. Police to me was the person doing the work of forcing the law that the citizen would do if he had the time, and that was his job. Nothing spectacular about it. The police are the people and the people of the police. And I see that as an extension. The only thing is, with selectmen, in the police job, 80% of your job is law enforcement and 20% is community caretaking. And selectmen, I think it's the other way around. You can tell me better because you're a selectman, but um that's the way I see it.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

You made the comment at the candidates night that you can't run it just as a business.

Transparency Tools And Working Smarter

SPEAKER_00 8:40

No, no, that's the biggest farce that's out there completely. A business is is an autocracy. Uh it's made for bottom lines. For instance, do you think that there would be a post office if it was run strictly as a business, where you would send somebody twice a day to every single house in a in a country of 300 million people? No, that we wouldn't do that. A business is UPS, um you know, um the uh FedEx and businesses like that. That that's businesses, but they ain't doing that hard stuff, that difficult stuff. That's what government's supposed to do. And people are paying us to do that. They're paying their taxes and they're paying us to do the stuff that businesses won't do. And don't forget, in a business, the boss and the board of directors is in charge. This is a town. This is goes, this goes back to the people are in charge. I mean town meeting and the voters. Exactly, a town meeting, and we can have all the happy talk about good government and all this and everything. But those people sitting in the in the chairs at the town meeting are the ones. If they say, look, you're only getting a thousand dollars or a thousand X, and that's what you're gonna work on, then that's what you're gonna work on. And you don't play games with it.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

You mentioned about your involvement. You were on the Rhenium Cable Commission originally, and then on the Ray Cam Board of Directors, um, which is a private nonprofit, but provides the cable service for the community.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

And I really think we got an opportunity here, and this is one of the things why I started thinking about select one. A lot of people asked me about run, because uh a lot of projects and things be seemed to be dragging on, and I kind of had a reputation of kind of getting things done once we got things moving, you know. And they asked me, but the Raycam thing was um Mike Halen, I mean, he's a he's a genius on on this stuff. Anybody that knows him, he dictates all the meetings, he does all the technology himself. But now, with the addition of an uh AI, we can take the uh words from the meetings, put it into a transcript, and give it to all the board heads so that everybody's at the same place at the same time. There's other things that we can do with it too. And not, there's no big spending money, it's just utilizing better the brain power and the people power that we have in place and and letting them work uh more efficiently and better. It's not gonna solve all our problems, but like I said at the at the candidates, my North Star just try to make each problem a little better than what you found it. Every call, when I first got on the police department, I was going to domestic disturbances that were literally older than I was. The argument was older than I was. And uh, you know, I got thinking like, well, what about all the cops that have been here before me? How come this ain't fixed? But what I settled on for the rest of my career, and I taught it at the police academy, which I taught from 78 until 2015, uh, make every call important to the people of the call, and leave every call a little bit better than what you found.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

That whole community policing aspect you were.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Community policing is the background of good government. No question about it. The people have to be involved, the the police have to be involved. And it's the big thing about voting, which we brought up at the at the debate too, is you tell people to vote, and I don't care who they vote for, I really don't care. But don't complain to me that nobody's doing anything and they don't, nobody cares, and nobody does anything, and you haven't voted. Because the people that are get voted in, if they see and they know, they know who votes and who doesn't vote, they get lists. If they see that nobody cares, then they they come up with one or two conclusions. What I'm doing is perfectly okay, okay, and everybody agrees. Or nobody cares. Nobody cares, so why should I care? And if I want to cut corners or I want to get away with something, nobody's watching. Once again, going back to the journalism. Because when I come on, there were journalists in the courtroom every day. They knew what was coming in, what was going out, and anybody tried to cut corners or or do something that just wasn't quite right. There was three, there were three journalists there. There was, you know, the Standard Times, the Taunton Daily Gazette, the Middleboro uh uh examiner.

What Makes Rainham Worth Fighting For

SPEAKER_03 13:37

What do you like best about the town of Greenham? What do you think is best about the town?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Town or I don't know, I don't know what's bad about it.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

So everything, okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

No, anything you'd like to do. Well it's obviously the people. It's not it's not the road system or the sewer system or the water system or this department or that department. It's the people. Um, you know, visit a 78, okay. I got out of a cruiser at midnight, and people that remember that, people that don't, started snowing around one in the afternoon, and then it snowed for two days. So I got out of it at midnight, and in uniform, I went into a snowplow because I used to be a truck driver, you know, at construction. And then when we was done with that, back in uniform, and then was back in that, I went on a front end loader. At the same time, going in and out of the police department, stopping there for uh bathroom breaks and stuff like that. The woman next door, Bucky Glavin's wife, has passed away now, fed the whole fire department and the whole police department out of her kitchen and for days.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Every day.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

The selectman's office was full of animals because the roof had collapsed on the pet store. And we brought, we saved all the animals and we put them in the selectman's room. They were not pleased about that.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

And you know, it still happens that um our highway department is short-staffed, so with the big blizzard that we have, uh, workers from our cemetery department, our high our sewer department, others, police fire, they all get involved to help out.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Can I talk about the highway for a minute? Sure. Yeah, I was down there the other day and I used to work there, as I said. I'm telling you, Norm, the the gentleman that runs it, Spritiven, is has he's just he's just doing a good job. I mean, he's got that place, like it looks like a hospital operating room. I mean, it's cleanly cleanliness. And I've been in a lot of garages, like I said, I was in construction. And he knows every vehicle there that he has, he knows the year, he knows the engine, he knows uh uh roughly how many miles or hours are on it, just off the top of his head. And he takes such pride in it. Um we can help him. You know, he's working uh millions of dollars of jobs on a whiteboard with a crayon, you know, uh uh as far as project progress. And he's got everything and he knows where it is in his head. Um, but we could help with that, you know, without spending a lot of money and make his job a little easier. But I'm not to go off on a tangent, but he does he did a good job. And I've also met with the fire department and the police department, of course, those guys I've known for years. This uh Norm and I didn't know each other.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

So you're saying there are ways to work smarter?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

There's definitely ways to work smarter, and we got to utilize these people. You've got to bring them in and ask them questions and see what they come up with answers. You know, several heads have more ideas than just one person. And we get stuck, we get stuck in old methods and old ways, try something new. Um, you know, and we're going into a rough time. I mean, this the school budget is, you know, I think it came in at uh uh they were looking for a three point something, three point nine million uh override of the microphone.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Last time around, and now the budget that was approved would be an eight percent increase. There may be a way to reduce that somewhat increase over the four and today diesel fuel is over four dollars an hour, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Uh four dollars a gallon. Yeah, so it's only gonna get and inflation went up this morning to uh triple the triple what it was last month. That comes out of our hide. That comes out of our hide. So, you know, it we're we're going into tough times, so anytime, and not as a slogan, but anytime we can get the same work done and not spend as much money on it, I think that's a win for the for the people.

Campaign Approach And Voter Outreach

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Definitely. Uh, what's been your campaign strategy?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Huh? I do a lot of Facebook posts. Um I I I couldn't, I don't, I never worked on Facebook before, you know, as far as I worked it for crime, but I never worked it, you know, politically. But um I got 64,000 views on 18 posts. What is that? Somebody from outside Rainham is reading them.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

I don't think we have that many people in here watching. I know views probably all want to come to Radium because they see what a great town they have.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

That's it. I'm drawing people here. Um I uh I I know that views by themselves are meaningless in its engagement and all that, but that's that's I do I spend a lot of time on that. And it's a good way to show people problems. People seem to be interested in it. And then I've been banging on doors, and I've been reacquainting myself with the town because you know I had that time away, and uh so the fire chief and the police chief and the highway uh and some of the board members have been bringing me up to speed on the gap between where I was before and where I am. So I'm having fun, I really am, and uh we'll see what happens. And you know, I know uh I say it all the time. People say you shouldn't say it, but you know, regardless of who wins, Rainham's not gonna lose. I mean, it's good people.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

What would you like to accomplish?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I would like to have the town work at its maximum capabilities, utilizing as much as we can of the talent and the people that we have in town. That's that's what my constant goal would be. That would be what I would be looking for. Individually, there's several problems that I'd like to oversee. I'd like to help uh what you guys have already got a good start on is the public safety building. That's gonna be a problem because that has to go out to bid again. And we we changed it from a one spot, do it, which is the cheapest way, to doing it in phases. And you're familiar with that with school projects from the school board, you know. It's always more expensive when you've got to build a school on top of the old school. So basically what we're doing, and and this is what I think is critical, is we're building the plane while we're flying it. Which is just as dangerous when you're talking about police and fire calls. You don't want anything to slip through the through the cracks. So I think I could be helpful for the board, if the board so decides, to keep an eye on that to make sure that that moves along and we don't lose the great rapport that we have with the town. That that would be good. A couple of these development projects are I'm not pleased with at all. I'm not pleased with at all. I don't think we did as much as we could have done um to make sure that the project went into the town with the least possible damage to Rainham's character and and and the and the way that Rainham is. I mean that uh project up on 138, uh the I I just feel so bad for those people up there. They they're suffering with that road that um the road from hell, and I know exactly what they're talking about because I I walked that road constantly while I was rebuilding it the last time. That was in 1983. And the cement then. What happens is all the cracks between the cement keep shifting. So when the trucks and the cars go down there, you get that constant thump thump, thump thump, thump thump, and then you you asphalt over it, and a couple years later it comes back again. And then, of course, the water district that was up there at the time. Kept no records. So they're going digging and stuff, and all of a sudden you got um a geyser in you know at the corner of Britain in uh 138 for a water pipe that nobody knew was there, etc. etc. You know, going because the records were paper, and there were two separate water departments at the time, etc. So I I would like to put into place uh to help put into place and help oversee some of these projects so that when they do come in and they have to come in, I know there's progress, I know there's development, but when they do is with the least possible damage to the town and the least possible strain on our infrastructure because uh the biggest complaint I get walking around, traffic, um can't get across streets, um, backed up, um speeding, you know, uh in in certain areas because people are late trying to get to work back. So that's what I like to work on.

Priorities: Safety Building And Development

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Okay. We've got a few more minutes here. Anything else you'd like to tell the voters, uh residents out there, other than the fact, of course, they have to get out and vote. We need them to vote. But what else would you like them to know about your candidacy? Anything else?

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Well, I I think um if you want to know what I would do, you could just ask any of the old timers that have saw me come up through the 40 years that I worked here. Um the best indicator of what somebody will do is what they've done in the past. Um and I I get kind of subconscious. Um I I get um I don't like to talk about things like I did 'em myself because everything that I've been in from the time I joined the Marine Corps until sitting at this table, I've done with other people. But you have to get up in front and and you have to talk about it. So I don't like I'm uncomfortable just sounding like it was delusion.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

You need a team, but you need somebody to lead the team.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yes. But and and it's and and believe me, when I say, for instance, um the Rainham Police Department, we already talked about, from four or five guys in uniforms to teaching at the International Association over many years, you know, for during that time period. Um, the task forces that you saw come up come and go. I mean, we were doing the uh right here in Rainham by the Bristol County Savings Bank in a donated building. We were doing the crime scene videotape for all over southeastern Massachusetts and using uh offices from half a dozen different departments. And we even did the Boston, some of the first Boston murder tapes, because they couldn't handle, remember the old uh V V they were on VHS tapes, and it was very difficult. You had to have good equipment to get a good snapshot or what we'd call a screenshot today off of VHS tape. So we designed that and we helped with that. We we got grants to do it. Didn't cost the town anything, the everything was donated, the building was donated. Same thing with the uh the Inform project that we did in the stool, which was the integrated fiber optic network. Um that's where all these cameras, first cameras that were used, would come up because people hadn't seen them, hadn't seen the wireless stuff. And that's just pulling in resources that are already there, testing them, beta testing them, putting them in, and I was very successful at that. So I I if if if you think I'm just here doing uh happy talk, talk to some of the people around town that know, and and you'll see. Uh we were the first accident reconstruction uh for a local department. Went to Northwestern University for that. We were the first canine in the area before Taunton or anybody. Weymouth had one, but nothing down in this area. We did the first computer forensics, we did the first cell phone forensics. Um we we taught the firearms for the whole southeastern mass. So we've we we do things, we did things, but we did it together, we did it collaboratively, and um, if it didn't work out, it didn't cost the town a lot, it didn't cost the cities a lot, and we moved on to something else, made changes.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

Some of the roles that select board um members get involved in balancing budgets or making sure you have to have a balanced budget for sure, um, finding the right people for the position, hiring some of the important positions in town, negotiating contracts, those sorts of things. Have you had experience along those lines?

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah, I've had quite a bit of experience on that. Um Chief King was the administrative lead for almost all the time I was on the police department. Uh however, I worked hand uh hand in uh glove with him on all the budgets from the original one out. He kind of left me behind when he went on spreadsheets uh because he was pretty good at it. Um but we had, I don't know, three or four million dollar budget. Uh my job was to get as much done out of the budget as we could. Peter's job was to get the budget and allocate it. Then when I moved to the DA's office, oh, and I did all uh, and I didn't do it personally, but I what Peter and I and the select board did all the hiring. And I think you can see from the men you have and the women that you have on the police department now, we did a pretty good job. Uh then when I went to the DA's office, I was one of a group of three, or sometimes four, that interviewed and hired all 200 people for the for the uh for the office because we had changed district attorneys. So everybody, it was we started like from day one and and we did that, and also worked on the budget there. And then, of course, as chief of staff in Fall River, that was not the hardest job I've ever had in my life. No question about it, and I've done many, many different jobs, but it it was all day long, the same pressure that you're talking about as a select person, times a hundred thousand rather than sixteen thousand. And I spent all my nights trying to learn about bonding, uh, you know, uh the different the different rates, the industrial rate and the uh the um the residential rates and the uh uh depreciation of equipment because they did their own trash and the and uh the bags and you know the trash bags to make people reduce the amount of trash going into the landfills and stuff. You'd study that at night and try to bring it in and you know during the day. Difficult job. So I understand it.

Closing Promise And Final Pitch

SPEAKER_03 29:10

I think we are just about out of time. If you'd like to say something in closing to our viewers out there.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Well, thank you very much for uh all your hospitality as I go around town. Uh it'd be great being back uh reconnecting. Um I'll just tell you this that uh if you hire me for selectment, do we get paid for this now?

SPEAKER_03 29:34

Uh there is a statement.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah. Oh, I I'll make another promise. If we have to cut town departments, I'll cut the same amount of my pay. But if you hire me for that job, uh you'll never ever hire anybody that'll work harder than I will. And I'll take every problem that you bring in and try to make it a little bit better.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

Thank you, our guest today, candidate Lou Pacico, for the uh Rainham Select Board. We want to thank you for joining us as well. And we'll see you here in the next episode of the Inside School.